


Deja Vu

by Stripe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-04
Updated: 2011-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stripe/pseuds/Stripe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is never anything new in the universe. Everybody and everything is simply a rehash of something that’s already happened, or something yet to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deja Vu

**Author's Note:**

> This was my entry for Round 2 of the HSO! The prompt this time was "shedding new light on canon," which I cannot say was a particularly easy task for a John<3Vriska fic given that we have essentially seen the full timeline of their interactions already in canon. Still, I kind of like the idea I ended up with, and I put a lot of work into it, so hopefully it's a good read!

Your name is Vriska Serket, and it is another typical night.  


You have won yet another game of FLARP and are busy reaping the spoils. Eridan’s already claimed the dead lusii as usual, and you are leading the small group of players you defeated to your hive for dinner. It was pathetic how quickly they went down, really. They must have been complete newbies to the game. No challenge to you at all.

As you march them to their deaths, you can sense some of their thoughts, their weak minds crying against the limits of your control. They just wanted to have fun, play a game with friends. They didn’t want it to end like this. They thought your death threats were just in character. They never thought they were in real danger...

You snort in derision. What bullshit. This is Alternia, not some fantasy land. There is always a risk of being killed. Always. Any troll too weak to understand that doesn’t deserve to continue existing, and this batch are top offenders. They should just consider themselves so lucky that you’re their executioner. Spidermom will kill them quickly, and if you hold your control until the very end, they barely feel a thing.

Of course, that’s a big “if.” Sometimes you’re simply too lazy, so you return to your respiteblock, accompanied up the stairs by their screaming.

  


  


Today you are in a more merciful mood.

You send your spoils marching off the edge, one by one. You allow Spidermom to finish her first snack before you send her another one, patiently waiting.

And so they go.

One. Mud blood. Spidermom clicks her fangs together, eager for more.

Two. Yellow blood. Close to green, but it hardly matters. You don’t discriminate.

Three. Rust blood. Lowest of the low. Probably wouldn’t have lasted long even if you hadn’t won.

  


  


You stare at Four as Spidermom works on digesting Three, sizing him up. If the symbol on his shirt is any indication, he’s a blue blood like you, and yet he played even more poorly than his peasant-blooded friends. You’d even go as far as to say that it was in large part his own incompetence which cost the rest of them the game. It’s a miracle he’s made it on Alternia for as long as he has.

Unfortunately for him, his time is up.

You begin to walk him off the edge into your lusus’s hungry fangs, slowly, one step at a time, for dramatic effect. And finally he’s at the edge, shuddering at the sight of the giant spider before him.

And he stops.

You grimace, urge him to take that last, final step to his doom, but his feet remain firmly planted on the ground. He even takes a few steps back from the ledge, trembling all the while. You march over to him, fully intending to find out what’s wrong, but when he sees you coming he begins to backpeddle and falls back, flat on his ass.

Pathetic.

“What’s wrong with you?” you demand, standing directly in front of him. “You’re supposed to jump in! Be eaten! What do you think you’re here for!?”

  


  


“I- I’m here because my friends are,” he explains, and there is an audible tremor in his voice. You narrow your eyes. “You led them here, so I followed them. It didn’t seem right that I’d be the only one to stay behind and go home.”

Of course. As a fellow blue blood you wouldn’t have any control over him. You overlooked it in your overwhelming victory. He was so blindly following your commands to the others that you simply assumed you were pulling his strings as well.

You would commend him for tricking you so well if it weren’t such a dumb thing to do.

“Are you an idiot?” you spit. “You just decided to follow your co-players to your death? What, did you think I was leading them to a tea party?”

“No, I knew you were going to kill them. You said so to the seadweller.”

Of course you did. You thought you had everyone under control by then. It didn’t matter whether or not they heard their own fates or not – you were the one who decided what they did and where they went.

Or so you thought.

  


  


“Then why the hell would you follow them?” You clench your fists at your side, feeling the familiar feeling of anger seeping through your body. You don’t know why you care so much, but his sheer idiocy is getting to you. “Do you just enjoy walking to your death? This isn’t just a game! We’re not roleplaying anymore! This is survival of the fittest!” You have to restrain yourself from throwing your arms in the air and stomping your feet. He’s staring at you earnestly as the tears dry on his face. You’re losing him. “If your co-players are holding you back, you ditch them and move on! If you have a chance to escape, you take it! You don’t just go blithely wandering into the den of a monster because everybody else is doing it!”

You’ve lost your cool and you know it and he knows it. He’s not scared of you any longer, and there’s an odd look in his eyes. If you didn’t know better, you would almost place it as pity.

“Isn’t there anybody you care enough about to stay with them to the end?” He looks you right in the eye as he speaks, his words without even the slightest tremor of fear. “Somebody you’ve been so close to over the sweeps that you owe it to them to be there, even if there’s nothing you can do to help?”

You want to laugh and spit in his face. You are _Vriska Serket;_ you don’t have time for sentimentality. You are destined to be the best there ever was, just like Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. Just like Mindfang, who never let her feelings hold her back. Not when she had to give up a potentially beautiful blackrom to escape her trial. Not when Dualscar killed her favorite slave out of jealousy. Not when she discovered her matesprit would be the one to kill her. She powered through it all and carved out her place in the world. She was powerful, just like you are destined to be. You cannot _allow_ yourself to care. Not for him. Not for anybody. It will only hold you back.

And yet...

  


  


“Go.”

  


_“...there is essentially nothing new in paradox space. Everything that can happen is either a visual or substantive reproduction of something which has already transpired...”_

 _\- Doc Scratch_

  


 

Your name is John Egbert, and it is another typical day.

  


Far as you can tell, the bullies on your bus work on a rotation. Today is your turn. They grab you by your backpack, force it off of your shoulders, and once they’ve got it, they knock you to the ground. You suppose you should be angry about it, but as they rifle through your things for anything worth stealing, you actually find yourself almost grateful. They aren’t looking to beat you up, just push you around and take anything that you have that they want. This is better than getting beat up. This doesn’t leave any bruises or cuts or black eyes that your Dad will question. It’s safe.

Your books and notebooks are scattered across the pavement, and your backpack lies empty beside them, already determined to have nothing of value. You watch as they kick your bag around, but you don’t make the effort to stand again. You’ve tried that before. All that happens is you get shoved a second time.

It’s just easier to stay down sometimes.

Predictably, when you don’t cry or struggle, the bus bullies lose interest and they begin to saunter off. As far as you can tell they haven’t done anything this time but scatter your belongings across the road. Everything you can remember being in your backpack is accounted for – if they took anything at all, it wasn’t important. You don’t know why they bother. You’ve tried asking what sort of vendetta they have against you in the past, but you haven’t gotten much out of them.

“It’s because your buck teeth make you look like a woodchuck.”

or

“Your dorky glasses, four eyes!”

or

“What kind of boy loves Nic Cage so much anyways?”

You don’t think that these are valid reasons for ruining your things, but you don’t see how you’re ever going to get anything meaningful out of them.

When the sound of their footsteps fades, you make a move to push yourself up, but when you glance up, you realize that one of them is still there.

  


  


“Need a hand?”

You stare up at the girl for a moment, unsure of whether to accept or not. Your prankster’s gambit tells you to expect there to be some sort of buzzer hidden in her palm, and that if you allow her to pull you up you’ll just get shocked. But you’re used to checking for hand buzzers, and when you look, you don’t see one there. What is she getting at?

The girl rolls her eyes. “No need to look at me with those doe eyes!” she exclaims, making wild hand motions. “It’s not like I’m going to bite!”

“You and your friends just pushed me on the ground and threw my stuff all over the street,” you explain. “I don’t think biting is too out there, really!”

She laughs heartily, and even though you’re used to having this girl and her friends laugh at you, this is a different sound. Less mean-spirited. You might even peg it as light-hearted, but you still don’t trust her intentions. “Don’t worry, I’ve already had my fun with you,” she assures you. “Now I’m trying to be nice. This is a limited time offer. You want my help or not?”

  


“Sure, I guess.”

You reluctantly take her hand, and to her credit, the girl pulls you up. No tricks, no jokes. She just helps you to your feet again, like she’s a normal human being who does not make it her goal to make your life miserable every other week.

You’re not really sure what to say to her – thank you seems a bit inappropriate when she’s the one responsible for pushing you down in the first place – so instead you opt for mostly ignoring her. If she wants to talk to you, you suppose that’s OK, but you have a more pressing matter to deal with. Even if you’re OK, your possessions are not.

You quickly asses the damage. A few of your graded papers have ended up in a puddle and are thus unsalvageable. A few of your books are lying open, which you know can’t be good for their spines, but otherwise most of your stuff seems to have made it out alright. No damaged textbooks this time.

Still, this is not something that you were hoping to see.

  


“I don’t guess I can rely on you to help me pick up my things, are you?” you ask as you bend down to gather your possessions. Your Ghostbuster’s lunchbox, your science text book, your math binder, all back into the bag where they belong.

“Nah. I’ll just watch.” With this, the girl leans against a lightpole, crossing her arms across her chest. “Besides, who knows? If I touch your stuff, I may just get the urge to rip it all apart! I’m actually being very gracious here!”

You roll your eyes as you collect your English folder. “Gee, thanks.”

The rest of your cleanup goes by without a word, yet she doesn’t move an inch. You have no idea why she’s hanging around. Surely she has something better to be doing than watching you pick up the pieces of this latest incident. Doesn’t she want to follow her friends or go home or something?

Once you finish, you sling your backpack over your shoulders and turn to look at her, brow furrowed. You can’t help it. You’ve asked before, but you feel like now you might get a real answer.

“Why do you guys always pick on me?”

  


“It’s because you make yourself such an easy target.” She doesn’t miss a beat, as though she was expecting the question. “You don’t even try to save your things. You just let us trash whatever you’ve got! What do you expect us to do when you give us an opportunity like that?”

“I don’t know. Ignore me? Is that not a thing you can do?”

She lets out a snort of laughter, and this is back to her usual mocking tone. You feel your heart sink. “Please. This isn’t elementary school anymore. You’re in Junior High now. Survival of the fittest. If you just _let_ yourself get pushed around like that, then you’re going to continue to be pushed around! It’s the way of the world. If you would at least _try_ to stand up for yourself, maybe you wouldn’t have your homework out in the middle of the road.”

You don’t believe her. “But if I try and fight back, you guys will just beat me down again.” You don’t even have to have experience to know this to be true. There is one of you, and, on any given day, roughly four of them. You don’t stand a chance.

She pushes off of the street light pole, a small smirk on her face. “Maybe. In fact, it’s pretty likely. You may wind up with a black eye or two.” She takes slow strides until she is standing only a few feet away from you, looking you directly in the eye. It takes every ounce of courage you have to stare back. “But if you make yourself a nuisance, we won’t be back. Why bother with the boy who will fight back when there are plenty of other weaklings just ripe for the picking, hm?”

She chuckles then and begins to saunter past you. It’s obvious this conversation is over. “Besides, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?”

  


“Good luck, John Egbert.”

-

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\-------  
\----  
\--

  
-  


 

  


  
EB: hey vriska?  
EB: i have a question for you.   
AG: What is it, John?  
AG: Make it quick, we don’t have all day here!  
AG: You have important hero 8usiness to 8e focused on.   
EB: yeah yeah, i know!  
EB: little miss bossyfangs.   
AG: ::::P   
EB: i just want to know why you’re helping me out so much.   
AG: Joooooooohn, we’ve 8een over this! You’re w8sting my time!  
AG: I’m helping you 8ecause you are destined to be a gr8 hero, just like me!   
EB: well yeah ok, but that’s not really what i was asking.  
EB: because jade and rose and dave are also big heroes but you aren’t helping them!   
AG: They just aren’t meant to 8e as gr8 as you.   
EB: but maybe they could have been, if they’d had you helping them?  
EB: so that’s not really a good answer!   
AG: Geeeeeeeez, you are persistent!  
AG: Well if you must know, I guess I can tell you.  
AG: 8ut it is a little 8it cheesy, so 8ear with me.   
EB: ok!   
AG: You seemed sort of familiar to me, I guess, when I first saw you 8um8ling around and screwing up your game for every8ody else.  
AG: Even though you’re a weird pink human, it seems like may8e we’d met 8efore?   
EB: wow, that’s pretty weird!  
EB: you know, i was kind of thinking the same thing.  
EB: you seem like somebody i met before, but i can’t put my finger on it.   
AG: Really, John, does it matter?  
AG: Chalk it up to deja vu.  
AG: We have 8etter things to do.   


  


  


  


  


  



End file.
